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  Headlines and summaries from the pages of Electronic Engineering Times . Previous editions are available from the 1994 , 1995 , 1996 , 1997 , and 1998 News Archives.
Friday, January 23, 1998SGI taps ex-HP exec to replace McCrackenStruggling workstation manufacturer Silicon Graphics Inc. today tapped Hewlett-Packard alumnus Richard Belluzzo to become its new chairman and chief executive officer. Belluzzo, who was executive vice president and general manager of HP's computer organization, will replace long-time SGI chief Ed McCracken.
Microsoft, DOJ settle contempt caseMicrosoft Corp. and the Department of Justice announced a settlement on Thursday of a contempt claim that t he DOJ had brought against the company. The settlement clears the way for a federal court to hear Microsoft's appeal of an injunction that prevents it from bundling its Internet Explorer browser with its Windows operating system.
LCDs feeling effect of Asia's economic woesOversupply and falling prices will continue to characterize the active-matrix LCD market in 1998, according to pundits at last week's Display Works conference here, who have recast their predictions in light of recent Asian economic turmoil. These circumstances could delay new fabrication facilities from coming online, which in turn could lead to shortages in 1999, analysts said.
Harris, Lucent join forces on digital-TV encodersHarris Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc. said on Wednesday that they have joined forces to provide broadcasters with digital-TV encoders. Harris said its Broadcast Division (Quincy, Ill.) wi ll market MPEG-2 encoder boards that Lucent had unveiled last year. Lucent (Murray Hill, N.J) is credited with developing the first MPEG-2 and HDTV encoders.
ARM optimizes its latest core for Windows CEAdvanced RISC Machines Ltd. (ARM; Cambridge, England) is about to add to its arsenal its first processor core that supports the Windows CE operating system, as the company fights for design wins in consumer equipment.
Startup Enen tests multimedia over the WebA tiny startup is bringing full-blown Internet multimedia conferencing to many of the electronics industry's largest corporations. Launched by distributor giant Marshall Industries in 1996, the company-called Education News & Entertainment Network (Enen)-has so far run business-to-business seminars for the likes of AMD, AMP, Atmel, Cypress, Fairchild, Samsung Electronics, Texas Instruments and Xilinx, among others. Enen hooks up participants to select partners or engineering groups in a conference setting, complete with interactivity among speakers and participants.
Cisco to treat voice as integral part of packet webFor the last year, Cisco Systems Inc. chief technical officer Ed Kozel has provided the same analysis of the public switched telephone network that energy analyst Amory Lovins gives about Washington: ignore it, and maybe it will go away. In recent weeks, Cisco has quietly rolled out several edge products, like the MC3810 gateway, that provide voice-over-IP services into standard IP backbones.
Thursday, January 22, 1998Analog neural chip manages telephone trafficBritish Telecom Laboratories is using artificial neural-network chips to investigate solutions to various problems in telephone-network management. The chip family, developed jointly by British Telecom and Korea Tele com (KT), is known as the Universally Reconstructable Artificial Neural Network (Uran).
Cable has few rivals in videoNew wireless technologies are making little headway into the multichannel video market, a U.S. study finds, leaving the cable industry with little competition in the delivery of video programming.
Motorola ups China investmentThe economic collapse of Korea and Indonesia has sent foreign investors running for the door, but at least one U.S. company remains bullish on production opportunities in the region. Motorola Inc. will double its investment in China to $2.5 billion from $1.2 billion by the year 2000, said P.Y. Lai, president of Motorola (China) Electronics Co. The company has also announced plans to up investments in Taiwan.
Carrier Access bets big on voice in multiplexingWhile most speci alists in access-multiplexer hardware are putting their money behind the Internet Protocol and data traffic, Carrier Access Corp. is betting its entire business plan on voice. The company believes that recent merger and acquisition trends in the competitive local-exchange carrier business--such as AT&T Co.'s acquisition of Teleport Communications Group Inc.--suggest a big opportunity in voice multiplexing over T1 lines.
CMOS challenges CCDsWith the demonstration of its pixel-sensor arrays, Rockwell Semiconductor Systems becomes the latest entrant out to prove that CMOS imagers can compete with CCD sensors and signal conditioners in digital cameras. The company, which showed its imagers at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, will introduce five devices this spring.
Wednesday January 21, 1998S3 to lay off 15 percentTroubled graphics-chip developer S3 Inc. announced Monday that it has laid off 15 percent of its workforce, or roughly 100 employees, in an attempt to reduce costs while regrouping.
Chartered, Lucent team on fabChartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. and the microelectronics arm of Lucent Technologies Inc. last week announced they will collaborate on a 0.25-micron, joint-venture fab being built at Chartered's site, the Woodlands Industrial Park in Singapore.
Two CAD-to-CAM standards near completionTwo standardization efforts that aim to reduce the time, errors and costs associated with turning pc-board designs into manufacturable products are about to bear fruit, with demonstrations set for tools that convert pc-board CAD software into CAM formats. But as the efforts near completion, there are two concerns: whether CAD vendors will use the standards, and which of the two output formats will be most used.
Cadence taps Synplicity toolsCompleting its transition away from its own synthesis tools, Cadence Design Systems this week will announce an agreement to resell the Synplify and HDL Analyst tools from Synplicity Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.). Cadence will present these tools as replacements for its Synergy FPGA synthesis line.
Clear Logic offers alternative to AlteraA new company here is offering a novel, cost-saving alternative to volume users of Altera FPGAs. Clear Logic Inc. today will announce a laser-programmed FPGA that mimics the architecture of Altera's popular Flex EPF845A--one of the most widely used FPGAs.
Toshiba splits with Moto, Siemens at 1 GbitToshiba Corp., a longtime partner of Siemens AG on DRAM development, appears to be balking at cooperation on the 1-Gbit generation and hence separating itself from t he benefits of the 300-mm pilot line that Siemens will build with Motorola Inc. here. IBM Corp., which has worked with Siemens and Toshiba on 64-Mbit and 256-Mbit DRAMs, will have access to the results.
Network giants snag startupsNetworking giants Cabletron Systems Inc. and Bay Networks Inc. last week took the first steps toward acquiring two high-profile switching startups. Cabletron made a long-anticipated offer for Yago Systems Inc., the Sunnyvale, Calif., switch-router company, in a deal worth as much as $213 million.
Monday-Tuesday January 19-20, 1998EDA startup seeks to redefine designA radical new approach to system-on-a-chip architecture and design is under development by Improv Systems, a startup launched here recently by several EDA veterans. If this company's Programmable System Architecture (PSA) and Java-based design system take hold, 21st-centu ry chip design will bear little relationship to any methodology known today.
Government tackles IT manpower shortageThe perceived shortfall in the IT work force was thrust into the national spotlight last week, as experts from government, education and industry crunched numbers and floated coping strategies here at the National Information Technology Workforce Convocation.
Sun, M'soft duke it out on cable TVThe recent decision by cable-TV operator Tele-Communications Inc. to license versions of both Java and Windows CE for its Web-enabled, digital set-top boxes promises to resonate far beyond the business plans of TCI, Microsoft and Sun.
Sharp's display shows way to system-on-panelSharp Corp. and a Japanese research company last week took the wraps off a display technology that could pave the way to int egrating system electronics onto a flat panel. The process devised by Sharp and Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co. Ltd. (Atsugi, Japan) creates continuous-grain silicon (CGS) on a glass substrate. Its crystal structure speeds electron mobility beyond what's possible today with the most commonly used flat-panel technologies: amorphous or polysilicon-based thin-film transistors (TFTs).
IEEE pushes WLANs toward Ethernet's data-rate rangeThe IEEE 802.11 committee will meet here this week to work through proposals for standards that would take wireless LANs from today's 1- to 2-Mbit/second bandwidth up to 10 to 25 Mbits/s. The committee hopes to vote on final standards by March.
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